DETROIT, MI - MAY 01: Casey Fien #50 of the Minnesota Twins pitches in the seventh inning during the game against the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park on May 1, 2013 in Detroit, Michigan. The Twins defeated the Tigers 6-2. (Photo by Leon Halip/Getty Images)

Minnesota Twins pitcher Casey Fien, left, and catcher Joe Mauer celebrate the final out as the Twins shutout the Texas Rangers 5-0 in a baseball game, Sunday, April 28, 2013, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

You know that confusion Tuesday, when Casey Fien trotted in from the Twins’ bullpen only to be sent back out to wait his turn?

That’s not nearly the strangest thing that has happened to the Twins relief pitcher in a baseball context.

Two winters ago, he played in Mexico.

A key reliever now for Minnesota, Fien entered the weekend series against his original organization of Detroit with seven straight scoreless outings and added one more. But in August 2011, he was released by the Houston Astros and in need of a new employer.

Fien followed his agent’s advice and signed a three-month contract with the Algodoneros de Guasave.

Founded in 1965, the team is based in a coastal town a few hours due south of Tucson, Ariz. Fien quickly realized he wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

“We would hear gunshots every night,” Fien said. “They were off in the distance.”

Of course, his contract required him to leave his hotel long enough to do some pitching. Bus trips could take as long as five hours, and each one carried some level of danger.

“When you go up to play Mexicali, you have to take this one road, and it’s pretty sketchy,” Fien said. “There are burial sites along the way. The (drug) cartels use them to drop off bodies. Mazatlan was pretty scary, too. That’s when they stopped sending cruise ships down there because of the cartels.”

Sinaloa, the state in which Guasave is located, is headquarters of the Sinaloa Cartel, considered one of the largest and deadliest drug-trafficking organizations in operation. A 2011 Los Angeles Times article called the Sinaloa Cartel “Mexico’s most powerful organized crime group,” and it remains a force along the 375-mile-long Sonora-Arizona corridor.

“People dress up as cops,” he said. “There was a shooting where nine cops were killed because they thought they were coming up on other cops. They weren’t cops. They were cartel guys.”

His wife, Joann, wanted to come down for a visit, but Fien had her wait until the team arrived in Mexicali.

“At least that was somewhat close to the border,” he said.

Fien, 29, grew up in Southern California and already had spent parts of five seasons pitching for the Tigers organization, including 11 relief appearances with Detroit. He’d been around the block enough to know how to handle himself, but that experience in Mexico in the final two months of 2011 was something even he couldn’t have envisioned.

It wasn’t just the intense pressure to win or the strange managerial decisions, such as having former Philadelphia Phillies left-hander R.J. Swindle issue two intentional walks — in the first inning.

“They didn’t trust that 55-mph changeup he threw,” Fien said.

Even something as simple as the nightly bus ride from Estadio Francisco Carranza Limon back to the team hotel became an adventure. Local fans quickly turned on the team’s five “gringos” during a 17-game losing streak early in the season.

“People started throwing rocks at our bus, so they actually stopped giving us the ride back to the hotel,” Fien said. “We had to take cabs back and forth.”

A minor accident on one of those harrowing taxi rides left Fien with a nasty bump on his knee and hooked up to an IV tube in a Guasave hospital. A few of the other “gringos” landed in the emergency room, too.

Fien speaks no Spanish, and the team-supplied interpreter (who doubled as the strength coach) was accurate only about half the time with his translations.

“I was having people take pictures of me when I was laying down getting the IV in my arm,” Fien says. “I gave one of the guys my camera: ‘This is me in the hospital. Pray for me.’ ”

That was more for potential malpractice evidence than social-media attention.

“There was no telling what they could do to me,” Fien said. “I could go in there with a bump on my knee, and I could come out with no arm.”

Immediately after the accident, Fien and the other “gringos” — Swindle, Sean Gleason, James Avery and Marshall McDougall — called the team offices of the Algodoneros (“cotton plants”) and were met with stony silence.

“Nobody would come pick us up out there,” he said. “So they made us get in another taxi and go to the field. Then, from the field, we got a ride to the hospital. We shouldn’t have even been taking taxis. It was in our contracts that we get a bus to the field, but since we were losing …”

When Fien arrived at the ballpark shortly before game time, the first question wasn’t about his well-being. Rather, he says, it was, “So, can you pitch tonight?”

Fien’s contract called for him to be paid $8,000 a month for the three-month season. Collecting that pay proved to be another headache.

“Our team went bankrupt,” Fien said. “They didn’t have money to pay the players, so we had to sit out. They started giving all the foreigners their money before they would give the Mexican players their money. Then they’d tell us not to tell them.”

You can imagine how that went over.

“They would give me all my money in cash and have me put it in my locker,” he said.

Not a clubhouse safe?

“No, my locker,” Fien said. “I mean, really? And it took them two months to pay me when I was supposed to be paid every two weeks.”

Fortunately for Fien, the Twins’ scouting staff had seen enough that winter to give him another shot stateside. He signed a minor-league deal with Minnesota while home in California for Christmas break.

He never bothered to return for the stretch drive of the Mexican Winter League schedule or the playoffs, in which the Algodoneros made a surprising run to the league championship series. Incredibly, the team insisted Fien accept full payment for the season in case he wanted to return the following winter.

At season’s end, Fien’s rights were traded to Aguilas de Mexicali. He has no idea what the Guasave team received in return.

“Could be money, could be bats, could be two baseballs,” he said, shaking his head.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

Jamal Crawford turns 38 years old on Tuesday, but don't expect him to go over the top with his birthday celebration. Aging isn't really Crawford's thing. The veteran Timberwolves guard has laughed in the face of Father Time for years. Just on Sunday, two days before a birthday few NBA players see during their professional careers, Crawford scored 20 points...

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Twins second baseman Brian Dozier always makes an effort to bond with his keystone partner at shortstop. Since the second half of 2016, that has been young Jorge Polanco. So it was with great sadness that Dozier was forced to react Monday morning to news of Polanco’s 80-game steroid suspension, handed down on Sunday by Major...

If the Minnesota Vikings win the Super Bowl, credit Zygi Wilf for signing Kirk Cousins. If they don’t, blame Rick Spielman. Wilf last week guaranteed Cousins $84 million for the next three seasons in his quest to win the NFL’s Lombardi Trophy. Wilf, who has owned the Vikings for 13 years, clearly has Super Bowl fever. A day after Cousins’...

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Twins third baseman Miguel Sano has known Jorge Polanco since they were 12-year-old baseball prodigies in San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic. So, it was an emotional conversation Sunday between the two teammates after Major League Baseball announced it was suspending Polanco 80 games for testing positive for a steroid. “It’s bad right now,” Sano...

Eric Staal chuckled at a question after Monday's morning skate. With the 33-year-old Wild forward closing in on 40 goals for the third time in his career, a reporter asked whether he would have believed it if someone told him before the season that he would be flirting with that milestone now considering his career was left for the dead...